Standard Presentation (12 minutes) Australian Marine Sciences Association 2025 Conference

Assessing the Recovery Status of the Southern and Eastern Australian Oyster Reef (119277)

Jadzia Livingston 1 , Boze Hancock 2 , Simon Branigan 3 , Jessica C Walsh 4
  1. School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia
  2. The Nature Conservancy, Global Oceans Team, URI Grad. School of Oceanography, , Narragansett, Rhode Island, USA
  3. The Nature Conservancy, Carlton, VIC, Australia
  4. School of Biology & Environmental Sciences, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Oyster reefs in Australia are Critically Endangered, and >99% and 92% of flat oyster (Ostrea angasi) and Sydney rock oyster (SRO, Saccostrea glomerata) habitats have been lost since colonisation due to overharvesting and European land use practices. The majority of the degradation occurred during the late 1800s and early 1900s, so the once iconic ecosystem has been largely lost to living human memory. Increasing public focus on restoration increases the need to monitor and project recovery success. The Green Status of Ecosystems (GSE) is a framework under development by the IUCN to measure the past, current and future recovery of ecosystems from degradation caused by human activities, relative to a "fully recovered” reference state. In this project, we perform a case study GSE assessment of the southern and eastern Australian oyster reefs. We compare the past, present, and future statuses of the ecosystem to the baseline to evaluate conservation impact and recovery potential. Our results show that the recovery score of the oyster reefs is increasing due to restoration, but they remain in critical condition.  These results will inform and motivate oyster reef restoration efforts as well as inform the development of standardised GSE methods.